Co-founders Jeremiah Siemianow, Brandon Crimmins and Alan Jin launched Muso last year and have already signed up 150 venues and 850 artists across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Muso is a digital marketplace helping local musicians find and book live gigs across Australia by connecting them with venues looking to uncover and access new talent.
Since the company was founded, 1,800 new gigs have been facilitated, showing a real demand for the platform.
Today the startup has announced that it has raised AU$1.5 million in a seed funding round to accelerate growth, expand its operations and build out its core team over the next 12 months.
The funding round was led by early-stage investment group Investible. With more than 70 investments, including Canva, Brandless and Ipsy, Investible is one of Australia’s most active early-stage investment firms.
Muso has also been backed by the new impact investment fund from Alberts, Alberts Impact Capital, who are investing alongside music company Unified Music Group and notable angel investors.
Jeremiah Siemianow, co-founder and CEO of Muso, said, “We started Muso after realising there was a real disconnect between musicians and venues on a local level. Many venues struggle to find musicians and DJs, while musicians end up wasting time and energy securing gigs and chasing payments.
“Live music is hard to organise, especially if you’re not networked or if you’re time-poor. Because of this, we realised there was a massive lost opportunity for local live music.
“We found that if we made live music easier to organise, more venues would begin hosting it, in turn creating more opportunities for musicians.
“We’re thrilled to be working with a group of investors that cover a broad range of expertise and experience. The deep music industry pedigree of Alberts Impact Capital combined with the firepower from Investible’s early-stage fund and network is something we’re incredibly excited about.”
Muso was selected for the Sydney-based Startmate accelerator in January 2019 and was invited to the BIGTECH showcase at BIGSOUND to pitch Muso to the Australian music industry in September 2019.
Hugh Bickerstaff, Chief Investment Officer at Investible, said, “I was most impressed by Muso’s founder team, whose passion and hard work has resulted in significant early traction for the business.
“Building a two-sided marketplace is never easy. Jeremiah, Alan and Brandon have identified a significant opportunity to improve the way artists and venues connect and work together. We are already seeing early signs of virality with artists organically signing up and venues onboarding themselves in the quest to find new talent,” Mr Bickerstaff added.
